Category: observations

I’m starting to doubt whether buying a light meter was a good idea.

I can’t make much sense of it, given the glacial exposure times I am working with. What I would like to find is a reliable way of converting EV or LV measurements to times, given a fixed aperture and shutter speed. I only have one variable to work with, after all.

I went to take my weekly picture of the local P-Patch and the meter had some outrageous value (4 minutes) where my crib sheet I have been using was just a bit lower.

Working from that, I went with a bracketed approach of 7 and 20 seconds. It was getting toward dusk and pretty cloudy but after the blown out two minute exposure I took last week and my research into the reciprocity characteristics of Fuji RVP (it has no reciprocity failure until after about 2 minutes), I decided to go with what has worked before. Yes, the two minute time came from this sheet, so it’s by no means fool-proof. Or perhaps I’m not the fool it was tested with.

I think I should test this out and if it works, I’ll sell the meter and go on my way.

The first installment of my large photo-documentary is online.

This was a several month project where I followed the progress of a Habitat for Humanity house being built by a coalition of women’s groups in Atlanta. The work took place in early 1992.

So far I have 143 images scanned, not quite half, as best I can tell. Some of them are pretty mucky and will need to be re-scanned once I get the waterspots and cruft off them. But I’m pleasantly surprised at the quality of the development and the density of the negatives. These were all done by hand and I had very little experience at it. They may lack the dynamic range of Ansel Adams but hey, you can see what’s in ’em.

For the cognoscenti, the film used was Ilford HP5 or Delta 400, most likely shot as rated. If memory serves, these were all shot with my Nikon FM2. Still have it. They were scanned on my Nikon Coolscan (LS-50) at 4000 dpi as 14 bit images.

The plan for all this is to clean it up and make a gift of it all to Habitat, the Junior League of Atlanta, and any other coalition members who want it. I have no idea if the homeowner on whose behalf this project was done still lives in the house, but I think a copy of it all would be nice to keep there. I think this is the place, as Joseph Smith said.

Polaroid pinhole camera:

To do this, all that is needed is a Polaroid Land camera, some small screwdrivers, and a small sheet of thin metal. These cameras can be found on eBay, or better yet, at yard sales. It will be made into a pinhole camera with several pinholes that can be switched into place, for use in various light conditions etc.

Hmm. I just managed to load film into this beast (not as complicated as it looks but fiddly enough, to be sure). Now I find this. <sigh>

I guess I can work through the 10 sheets of film and see how it works (at $2/sheet, yuck!).

My birthday present to myself — a Gossen Luna Pro light meter. How insecure of me.

Of course, it won’t be very useful until I figure out how to transpose the normal exposure ranges it covers to the elephantine exposure times required by pinhole cameras.

But there are crib sheets and HOWTOs for that.

Always a place for film:

I think there should always be a place for film photography.

Both digital and physical have their points: they both offer a kind of immediacy (come to that, so does Polaroid, but it doesn’t offer convenient replication). With film, you can see give someone a picture in as little as an hour. With digital, you can send an image to someone in considerably less than that.

But which will be handed down to future generations in a battered cardboard box to be marveled at, pondered over, and otherwise enjoyed?

Stopped by the King of all Makers today to pick up some disused film processing stuff and was gifted with a Polaroid EE100 Special.

Once I figure out how it works — the 9 Year Old has a Polaroid i-zone so it’s not totally foreign — and can find some film, it will be interesting to see what can be done with this.

I also got some super brass shim stock from the same benevolent source: think freezer-weight aluminum foil for pinhole-making, but gold in color. Gotta find some reasons to use that.

Finished off a roll of 120 RVP today in the pinhole FrankenCamera and dropped it off for processing. Should be able to get it back tomorrow and post the results if there are any 😉 Should be 5 Tulip Festival images, 2 P-Patch shots and a train image.
The final frame on the roll was at Carkeek Park by the railroad tracks: a 2 minute, or close to it, exposure of a passing train framed by a pedestrian bridge. Turns out the watch I borrowed didn’t have a second hand, so I’m not optimistic that one will turn out.

Wow. If you’re finding your mini to be pokey and it’s not maxed out, by all means max it out. And stand back. I bought a 1 Gb stick from OtherWorld Computing: shipped, it was less than $100 and I had it in hand in 2 days.

I won’t say it’s as fast as a dual G5 but it does make it noticeably more snappy. GarageBand is (more) usable and I am running some photo scans right now to see how that goes.

Results: scans that used to take 10 minutes now take about 4.

Item 6 scan started 4/12/06 4:29:52 PM
Item 1 scan started 4/12/06 4:34:07 PM
Item 2 scan started 4/12/06 4:38:34 PM
Item 3 scan started 4/12/06 4:43:07 PM
Item 4 scan started 4/12/06 4:47:20 PM
Item 5 scan started 4/12/06 4:51:33 PM
Batch scan completed 4/12/06 4:56 PM

That includes the scanning and some post-processing (that’s where I suspect the additional RAM is making itself felt).

Continue reading “What a difference quadrupling the RAM in a Mac mini makes”

I have commissioned a new photo project for myself this summer. I live overlooking the Picardo Farm P-Patch, the first of Seattle’s popular community gardens, and every spring, I watch the freshly tilled soil become a mosaic of small plots of flowers, beans, peas, tomatoes, with structures ranging from raised beds to ersatz greenhouses. Bear in mind, all this stuff needs to removed by October when the field is tilled over and seeded with a cover crop.

It occured to me I should take a series of photos of this transformation <cue “Circle of Life” theme>. Got the idea this weekend, found a good vantage point (accessible and immovable). Went down there tonight to take a picture and there is already one greenhouse up. So I missed showing the bare field by a day or two.

These will be color pinhole shots, so kind of impressionist but still reasonably useful as documentary material. I have two vantage points, at each end of the field. Looks like about 30 weeks, give or take.